


That

by Lapsed_Scholar



Series: Family Stories [6]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s11e02 This, F/F, F/M, Family Dinners, Humor, Murderous assassins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 16:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18996238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapsed_Scholar/pseuds/Lapsed_Scholar
Summary: Dinner parties at the Mulder/Scully household are as weird as everything else about it.And that was even before the shadow agents busted in and tried to kill them.Will Scully at seventeen is his father’s impulsive cockiness and his mother’s stubborn rebellion and a trial to the patience of them both.(This story is part of a larger alternate universe, but that series itself is a very loose collection. I strive for internal consistency, but reading one doesn't require reading the others.)





	That

**Author's Note:**

> I spent a lot of time trying to work on the number of projects I already have started and even outlined, and then my brain went, "What about 'This,' but it's a family caper?!"
> 
> And so this is, well, that.

Dinner parties at the Mulder/Scully household are as weird as everything else about it.

And that was even before the shadow agents busted in and tried to kill them.

But, OK, back up. Maybe this doesn’t really count as a dinner party. It’s just Langly and Karah, after all. Frohike and Byers and Suzanne didn’t even come. “Dinner party” in his head usually looks something more like when they host Uncle Bill and his family, and they clean the house (which is normally a wreck), and his mom frets about the cooking (even though she usually doesn’t cook), and his dad wears a cashmere sweater and slacks (instead of an old t-shirt and jeans) and inexplicably manages to look like he stepped out of a J. Crew catalog.

Anyway. It wasn’t one of those dinner parties. It was just Langly and Karah, and even though he likes Langly and Karah, he’d rather have been hanging out with his own friends, but he’s been banned from that for the time being. (And, yeah, OK, he knows why, his dad had made it abundantly, repeatedly, _exhaustively_ clear why, and maybe he gets it. He had thought his parents were simply out-of-touch with the way the world works now and stuffy about sex that wasn’t old and married, but his dad could talk in _entirely_ too much detail about things he’d rather not know that his dad knows about—things _Will_ hadn’t even known about. And, really, his mom isn’t any better, it’s just that her detail is _medical_ detail.)

[Will Scully at seventeen is his father’s impulsive cockiness and his mother’s stubborn rebellion and a trial to the patience of them both.]

So he’d been at this dinner party. It’d been OK, for a dinner full of old people. He made the lasagna, which everyone seemed to have liked, and he’d been able to carry on a side conversation with Langly about Fortnite while Karah talked earnestly with his parents about some sort of virtual reality thing they’d found.

(One of the other weird things about the Mulder/Scully household: People will come to his parents and tell them about all kinds of weird shit.)

“But seriously, Mulder. Check this out!” Langly, distracted back to the main conversation, pulled out his phone and thrust it in front of his dad’s nose, causing his dad to squint and mumble and take the phone in an attempt to see whatever it was Langly wanted him to see without his glasses.

It was around then that there was a crunch of gravel that sounded an awful lot like a car coming up the driveway.

His mom peered in the direction of the front door. “Didn’t you say that Frohike couldn’t make it?”

Langly, still mostly distracted by whatever he was showing Will’s dad, “Yeah, he’s mentoring script kiddies at the library.”

His dad looked up from Langly’s phone to lock eyes with his mom, and then the shadow agents busted down the door, and the dinner party went to hell.

From behind the table (his mom had immediately flipped the table onto its side, hissed “Stay down,” and smoothly followed his dad out of sight), Will could hear an awful commotion: crashing furniture, splintering wood, gunfire. He had been terrified—he’s not ashamed of that, sudden shadow agents are terrifying—but he had also wanted to see what was happening. He hasn’t exactly been grateful for his parents recently, but he’d suddenly realized how much he needed them and loved them and how much he’d miss them if they were killed by shadow agents. He didn’t want to lose them. His attempts to peer around the table were thwarted by Karah, who grabbed him while Langly whispered. “Your mom and dad know what they’re doing, Will. They’ve gotten through tougher situations than this.”

It strikes him sometimes—his parents are dangerous.

It’s always weird to think of them that way. He’s never thought they were anything other than good people (maybe obnoxiously good): his mother’s patience and integrity, his father’s humor and gentleness. But he’s seen glimpses of some other life they’ve led. Their expressions set in grim determination, the way they can move as a fluid unit without speaking, the facility both of them have with tactics and the guns that they keep (safely, responsibly secured) in the house.

They mostly try to hide that part from him and Emily (except for the weird nonverbal communication thing—they do that shit all the time). And they’ve been mostly successful at it. Barring, of course, instances like these when their home gets invaded by shadow agents.

The sounds of gunfire and furniture destruction had tapered down to a few barked commands in a foreign language, then further sounds of struggle, a thud, and, finally (to his almost-sickening relief), his dad: “Ouch. Shit, Scully, where the fuck did these guys come from, anyway?”

And his mom: “Mulder, stop squirming, let me see your head.”

(Another weirdness: His parents call each other by their (differing) last names. And Will didn’t even get his dad’s name—he’s a Scully like his mom and sister. He asked his dad one time if the name thing bothered him, and his dad said, “I decided to keep my name when I got married. Some men do.” Which wasn’t any less weird or anything.)

Since that conversation seemed to mean that the danger was mostly over, Will, Langly, and Karah all stood up from behind the remains of the dining room table to take in the scenario.

There was a lot of broken furniture and dust. Will could make out that the desk in the living room had been knocked over and there were papers all over the floor. The curio cabinet in the entryway had fallen down, and the banister to the stairs had collapsed into the living room—Will got a glimpse of a body on top of the banister before his parents noticed he had left the kitchen and moved as one to block his view into the living room.

They sorta had to move as one—the shadow agents had apparently handcuffed them together. They looked like they were mostly all right, though messy and having been through obvious exertion, and his dad looked like he’d maybe been hit in the face.

“Um, let’s stay in the kitchen,” his mom suggested.

And so that’s how everything came to the present moment: the five of them standing around among the upended dining room table and the shattered chairs staring at each other. It’s a weird way to end a dinner party.

“Any idea who those goons were?” asks Langly.

“I’m guessing they’re not a fan of whatever it is you guys dug up this time,” Will’s dad winces and jerks his head as his mom tugs on his neck with her free right hand and stands on her toes to probe at a swelling on his cheekbone. “Jesus, Doc, take it easy. The rest of your patients are dead.”

“Hold _still_. Why don’t you sit down so I can look at this more closely?” The fact that they’re secured together clearly isn’t helping—his mom keeps trying to move her left hand to grab at his dad’s head, but the movement is impeded by his dad’s right arm.

“On what? We seem to be out of chairs.” This is pretty much true. Most of their chairs have been splintered to firewood. His dad turns to address Langly again, “I think they were speaking Russian—any idea what the Russians would want with your VR world?”

“Russians? They’ll come up in cybercrime and spying networks sometimes, but all the indications we found pointed to this being pretty solidly US government contractors,” Karah frowns. “I don’t suppose you know what they were saying?”

“I was a little distracted just now. My Russian isn’t very good. Mostly it’s from getting yelled at in a gulag twenty years ago with Krycek.

Will stares. He hasn’t heard the gulag story. It seems like that would be a more significant story than the time a community was menaced by a bunch of housecats. “Who’s Krycek?”

“A one-armed Russian assassin who started out trying to seduce me, and then hurt your mother and murdered my father. Neither of which really worked out for him on the seduction front. Remember what I said about treating your romantic partners with respect and not hurting them?” Credit where it’s due, his dad knows how to stay on message. (He’s purposely not going to think about his dad as the target of a seduction campaign. Thinking about his dad with his mom is bad enough.)

Will’s mom clears her throat.

“Oh, right, Scully spent the time I was in the gulag jailed for contempt of Congress because she refused to give up my whereabouts or bend to the will of corruption in government.”

“Focusing on the _current_ corruption in government,” interjects his mom (who apparently did time for contempt of Congress and no one thought to mention it to her children), “it seems plausible that there might be a Russian interest in the work of US government contractors—whether they’re collaborating or just interested in the technology for their own purposes. Or manipulating us. What I want to know is why this group ended up here, targeting us and shooting up our house.”

Langly is looking at his phone with knit brows. “If they tracked us through the sample I was showing Mulder just now, that means there’s an exploitable vulnerability we don’t yet know about in the OS or one of the apps, or maybe the VPN’s failed, or they’ve cracked into the localization data, or there’s a process that’s running deep enough that we haven’t caught it. I’d really like to take it back to HQ and see if I can—”

“Richard, if it’s _tracking_ us, you don’t want to take it _with_ you,” protests Karah. Karah might also be a nerd, but at least she’s a responsible nerd.

“Then let me call Frohike; we’ve got something that can wipe it remotely—”

“Physical destruction is much faster and much simpler,” Karah pries the back off the phone and turns to Will’s mom. “Do you have a drill? Or a hammer? We could hit it with a hammer.”

Will’s mom bites her lip. “What if we shoot it? Would that work?”

Will’s dad cringes and gestures with his right hand (which is still connected to his mom’s left via handcuffs). “Can you not shoot it while I’m attached to you, Scully? I know you’re a better shot than me and everything, but I’d rather have some personal space for this.”

“You’re former Feds—you have any spare handcuff keys around here?” asks Langly.

Both of his parents wince and Will suddenly has an _awful_ premonition where this is going, which is confirmed by his mom’s reluctant sigh and, “Upstairs, bedside table. With... um... I actually think we can make it upstairs just fine to get those ourselves.”

Fortunately, the shadow-agent-Russian-spies seem to have noticed their missing comrades by now, and there’s another crunch of gravel, accompanied by headlights shining through the living room window.

“No time for that—we have to get out of here _now_.” His dad grabs the offending phone from Karah and throws it into the oven (though Will has no idea what good _that’s_ supposed to do), and then the five of them are running out the back door into the woods behind the house. Will’s parents bring up the rear (herding him and Langly and Karah, he thinks), and they’re really surprisingly skilled at running while handcuffed together, given how vastly different they are in height. Will isn’t sure what to make of that, and he’s not sure that he wants to think about it enough to make anything of it.

He’s not sure how long they’ve been running when they make the road behind the house (he’s athletic like his dad, enjoys playing sports, but hadn’t expected to have to run for his life after having dinner with his parents’ friends), but apparently the whole murderous-shadow-agents thing has made enough noise in enough places that Skinner finds them, driving up the road in a not-at-all-suspicious men-in-black-looking sedan.

“What happened?!” is the first question Skinner asks, as he pulls the car over to the side of the road and gets out to look at the group in front of him.

“Well, you’re out here; can’t you tell us what happened?” Sometimes Will thinks that his dad reverts to a teenager himself when faced with his former boss.

“I don’t know for sure what happened, Mulder, and I have to be careful about who sees me asking questions. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not a great time to be in the FBI, and especially not if you’re investigating Russian activity. The only thing I heard was intra-agency chatter about an altercation out by your house, and I’ve gotten some indication that Russian agents were involved in it.”

“Involved, but not the sole cause of?” asks Will’s mom.

Skinner looks pained. “As I said, I have to be careful about what I ask and of whom. I’m not going to be able to stay out here much longer before they notice I’m gone. Here—” he releases the handcuffs connecting Will’s mom and dad and passes his dad a wad of cash. “That’s all I have on me. I have to go.” He fixes Will’s parents with a stern look. “Whatever you two decide to do, be _careful_ about it.”

“Thanks, Dad,” mutters Will’s dad, rubbing his wrist and pocketing the handcuffs, hopefully for some practical and nonsexual reason.

After Skinner drives away, the five of them are left standing by the road.

“Do we get taxi service out here?” his dad asks his mom, who frowns at him. “You want to call an Uber to the middle of nowhere into what is certainly not the aftermath of a deadly shootout?”

“If I can borrow a phone,” says Langly, “I’ll call Frohike and Byers, and they can come get us. Karah and I should probably head back to HQ. We’ll see what we can dig up from there. But if there’s a leak in our equipment and they’re onto us, I don’t know if we should take Will with us.”

“Can you track your phone, the one back at the house?” asks Will’s mom. “Since I’m sure the second group has to have found it by now, maybe it’s worth leaving it intact. Mulder and I could investigate the source.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” asks Karah. “Whoever is behind this, they’re clearly not messing around.”

“They’ve invaded our home, threatened us and our child, and I don’t think we can safely go back until we figure out what’s going on.” Will’s mom has a steely tone in her voice, but she also sounds upset. His dad rubs her shoulders.

“After this, make sure to use your phones as rarely as possible,” emphasizes Langly, as he’s scrolling through the contacts on Karah’s phone. “We’re not sure what kind of tap they have yet—whether it’s limited to a single device or infecting larger networks.”

“Frohike can get us—have Byers run Will over to Fall’s Church,” says Will’s dad. “Doggett and Reyes can take him to stay with Emily and Grace for however long this takes to blow over.”

Will’s upset—he wants to go with his parents and figure this out, or at least be allowed to hang out with the Gunmen and feel like he’s involved and hasn’t been shipped away. He glares at his dad and kicks at a rock, “Why can’t I just stay with the Gunmen?”

“Because they’re clearly tracking us in some way,” says Karah. “As untraceable as we try to be there, you wouldn’t be safe.”

“Will, it’s our highest priority to make sure that both you and your sister are safe. You understand that,” says his mom.

And he supposes he does, but it’s the waver in her normally calm, collected voice that really convinces him. So he goes with Byers to Uncle John’s house (Byers attempts to make polite conversation with him about what he’s doing in school. And he’s suddenly curious about what reason his parents are going give for why he’s not in school. He’s sick?). And then Uncle John and Aunt Monica drive him to his sister’s house in John’s old pickup that’s too primitive to have GPS tracking capabilities. Will falls asleep in the back seat.

~

They get to Emily and Grace’s apartment at around 4:30 in the morning.

“Woulda been polite to call ahead,” mutters John, but he knocks on the door anyway. And then, when there’s no answer, follows it up with more knocking.

There’s the sound of stirring in the apartment, and then Grace’s voice: “Um, sweetheart? I think your brother got arrested?”

And thank you to his future sister-in-law, why would she assume something so demeaning, sure Emily has been calling him an idiot since he had told her how much their parents freaked out over his seduction methods, but he didn’t think...

Oh, right. He’s standing here in front of the door, sandwiched between Monica and John. And even though Monica is dressed in a flowy, casual non-cop dress and John is wearing a t-shirt and jeans, John, at least, is never gonna look like anything other than a cop.

There’s more rustling behind the door and then Emily’s voice, “Oh! No, that’s just—” and the door opens to his sister in a nightgown and slippers, face scrubbed bare and hair pinned up. Grace peers over her shoulder in her own nightwear, her hands nervously playing with the cuffs of her sweatshirt.

Emily is clearly worried to see them, but she goes to hug them anyway. “Uncle John! Aunt Monica! You’re an idiot, Will.” (He’d really appreciate it if Emily would stop that.)

“Hi, Emily,” says Monica. “Your parents are OK, and we can explain everything, but can we come in first?”

~

The five of them spend the next couple days in a one bedroom apartment. They’re allowed to get out and leave, at least; John and Monica have apparently deemed the danger not to extend all the way here. But they still insist that everyone stick mostly together, and they don’t want to risk the separation of a hotel room to sleep. They also clearly don’t want to leave themselves.

“What’d you tell ’em about where we are?” asks John.

“We’re investigating chupacabra sightings in New Mexico,” replies Monica cheerfully.

“Oh, great. That’ll look fantastic in our next departmental review. You couldn’t come up with somethin’ more respectable?”

“Not that I could write a convincing case report about that wouldn’t open itself to corroboration from other agencies. Relax, John. I don’t think Skinner is going to draw attention to our precise location right now.”

Will’s mom has, indeed, called him into school sick. She’s a doctor, so it never occurs to the administration to question her further. Any reprieve he thought he might get from study is dashed, however, by Grace’s program for their time here. Emily goes to work during most of the day, but Grace, when she’s not in class, shows them around the university grounds and takes them to visit a few museums. She’s apparently under the misapprehension that just because _she’s_ in grad school, everyone should be interested in studying all the time.

Evenings are kind of cramped. John and Grace spend a considerable amount of time discussing and debating various ideas for criminal justice reform. Monica works on her case report.

~

Whatever sort of international conspiracy his parents have been central to unraveling, it doesn’t take them longer than three days. He remembers again that they’re dangerous, although, judging from how tired they look and how slow and stiff they are when they’re moving, they’re not invulnerable.

They both hug him tight when John drops him off at the door. The house is still a mess, but they’ve apparently had someone come in to clean up all of the more overt signs of violence. There aren’t any bodies, and Will doesn’t see any blood.

He decides cover his concern with impudence. “I bet you guys just ditched me so you could have freaky, rough sex the whole time.”

His mother gives him her impassive stare—the set of her mouth is distinctly unamused—but his father returns, “If that were true, son, you wouldn’t be able to tell. Or, at least, you haven’t so far,” and Will does regret the quip a little bit. He doesn’t need that factoid.

“There’s one less sinister, world-spanning computer simulation in the world,” concludes his dad, easing gingerly onto the miraculously still-intact sofa next to his mom. “Now what do you say to watching ‘The Twilight Zone’ on Amazon Prime with me and your mom?”

“One less, huh?” asks Will, settling on the couch next to them.

They’re weird, his parents. But they’re all right.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't get away with writing Will's thoughts and keep a G-rating. (Although I actually think Mulder did more to wreck it than Will did.)
> 
> It's been a number of years since I've been a teenager, and I've never been a teenager like Will (or a teenage boy). But I tried!


End file.
